 |
| cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by HeyThereSpaceman. |
Challenge 1: Set up your RSS Reader
SELF:
I started using iGoogle ages ago but then they decided it would be phased out. Instead of finding a replacement and slowly migrating over, I made lots of bookmarks and in hindsight, spent too much time pushing instead of pulling. So this week, our first assignment towards becoming a Flat Classroom Certified Teacher was to create an RSS Reader - to become pullers of information. I tried out Feedly but settle on Google Reader. Netvibes came recommended during our first virtual meeting but I'll have to revisit it if the need arises. I managed to make folders for the blogs I follow and did some much needed spring cleaning as some had not been updated since 2009 and others I'm just not interested in anymore. I even made and saved searches for tweet #flatclass or #math or #edchat.
SCHOOL:
"When used efficiently by a school, technologies operate in an ecosystem with one another both culturally and systematically." The examples list ways that a school can support itself leveraging the desires of students to help, share and be part of the bigger whole. I'd like to find ways for my students to become invested in their own schooling and to share this type of connection with my colleagues. Given that this is my first year at ASM, I am doing what I learned early on when entering a new school culture...observe and quietly do your thing. Others will take notice.
STUDENTS:
I have got to get my students to become pullers. What this means is that they spend most of their time pushing buttons or clicking on links to find information - most of the time the first link that a Google search finds for them. While this can be slowly and painfully productive, it has led them straight to the websites that simply answer their question. They don't need to read, comprehend, distill or even compose their responses. Someone has done that for them somewhere already. Of course asking questions that cannot be easily searched is a new skills teachers must develop - engaging higher level thinking skills. However, I am thinking how powerful it would be for my students to be able to pull information specific to their learning - how much less time they will waste looking and how much more time they will spend learning.
Your observation about getting students to be pullers is so apt...yet,so difficult to do. It's so much easier for them to just do a google search, yet in the long run, they will be amazed at the rich and often unexpected content they can pull in if they commit to being pullers! How to give them a taste for that is the challenge.
ReplyDelete